In a possibly vain attempt to get some discussion on this group, I will now come out of the closetpublicly and say I think that Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is a very poor excuse for a game. Gary Gygax has no conception of how books are actually used in a play situation, and a very poor ability to understand hand-to-hand combat. Further, the magic system is totally counter-intuitive. Finally, the importance of magic items (as well as the ideas of class and level) depersonalizes characters, leading to a "rogue"- type environment. (Oh yes, the description of gods in terms of hit dice, etc., is totally useless to the DM, and the unarmed combat system is an atrocity; sorry to have forgotten these.) The only reason that AD&D is the most popular FRP game around is that it has a major lead on the others--unfortunately, TSR has not used this time to improve the rules, only to lengthen them.

The only game I know of that's worse than AD&D, aside from basic D&D, is Tunnels and Trolls. Both RuneQuest and The Fantasy Trip provide much better alternatives, and I am told that SPI's DragonQuest (now owned by TSR) is hard to learn but very smooth once one learns it. I strongly recommend that any AD&D player buy RuneQuest and play a few games before further glorifying their rather primitive game.

Well, who do you think is going argue with you? Not me, and I've only been using ad&d (yes, Gary, it's copyrighted) for about 4 years to administer a huge campaign. The magic rules are ridiculous, the hand-hand combat makes less sense than using a quarterstaff (and a quarterstaff DOESN't help your AC , com on now, I use a staff, and see if I am as easy to hit when I have a staff as when I do not). The reason that I used ad&d was that it was the only well described system on the market when I started DM'ing. Face it, d&d was the FIRST system generally out, and it was certainly better than anything else (i.e. nothing). Since it couldn't benefit from experience, it has lots of problems. Hopefully, a revision will come out someday that UPDATES ad&d to the current level of complexity and sophistication, and provide a system that is a bit more playable in the long run. As for the "organization" of the books, I couldn't agree more. Take a look at DragonQuest (tm-BANTAM BOOKS!!!!!!) to see something that is better organized. DQ's rights, except for movie rights, are now owned by Bantam, who is distributing it with their normal line to lots of bookstores, which should increase the distribution of the gamequite a bit. For some strange reason, TSR still owns the movie rights, whatever they amount to. Apparantly SPI had already made a deal with Bantam before TSR called in their loan, and TSR had to stick with it, and

For all who say AD&D sucks, I will have to agree that Gygax is far from perfect. The following should be remembered - D&D is just a game, and is not supposed to be realistic. If it were realistic, you would get chopped in half and spill real blood. Quite often you want to play a non-realistic scheme. The combat system is one that can be understood by novices and this is good for the game.

Secondly, just about everybody plays d&d quite differently, so nobody really pays that much attention to the tsr rules. They are a handy thing to base something on, and something that somebody from accross the continent can play with. If anybody in my dungeon quotes gygax, Ijust say: Oh, so that's how he plays it. Interesting.

I have played with many many combat and magic systems, and find that many people, in their desire to do better, often do worse.

I learned my D&D before the other thing was around. I like to think that I play the way the game was meant to be played, by using a few tables and a copy of Greyhawk as a LOOSE guideline, arbitrarily remolding things to suit my whims. This puts the DM in a much more omnipotent role. Combat is much more realistic if the DM randomly makes a character slip and fall under the swords of 15 berserkers, etc. Magic may also be made less silly. Besides, I enjoy the look of despair on the faces of AD&Ders when I throw them a curve!

els[Eric Strobel] pur-ee!pur-phy!els

Looks like Eric Strobel wins the Old School award in this exchange. And watmath the "dudes chill out" award.

This is great!!!! Of course, I had no idea what a Usenet was back then, it was impossible to access it on my TRS-80 at the age of 17. But that is exactly the kind of stuff that my friends and I (total TFT and -- briefly -- DQ heads) would spout about AD&D. I don't remember that we ever directly pooh-pooh'd TSR or Gary (like Metagaming's Howard Thompson would in Space Gamer and/or Interplay), but we were definitely drunk on the kool-aid of the also-rans at the time. As 17 years olds, we knew it all, and we were right. Of course.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.